This is a really amazing but sad story. It's amazing in that it happened in the first place. This man obviously felt he had no other options in terms of treating his wife, so he killed her. The woman really wasn't very old but had obviously been sick for a while and without insurance how could anyone afford to care for a terminally ill loved one? It's really appalling that in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, the last "superpower" in fact, health care is in such a sorry state that someone finds that his only option when a loved one gets ill is to kill her. Health care should be one of the first things that is funded by the government. Shouldn't we expect a country that will spend $200 million a day to occupy a foreign country and take part in their civil war to make a priority of keeping its population healthy? The money is obviously there to spend on huge no-bid contracts to companies like Haliburton who are doing nothing more than stealing from the government, and therefore from us. At the same time the government is being outrageously wasteful when it comes to purchasing items. How much health care could this woman have received for the $998,798 that we paid a supplier to provide two tiny washers to the government? The argument that single-payer health care would require a tax increase falls on its face when wasteful spending like this enters into the equation. Again, the money is there but our current government has different priorities for it.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
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Yeah, saw this myself yesterday as I was browsing healthcare news on MSNBC yesterday or the day before.
Seems Massachusetts is requiring that every adult have health insurance or they will be assessed a tax each year on their taxes. So it's a forced requirement which puts the working poor into an odd position of complying with state law, then having no money to pay rent or food or other bills, or go against the law and pay massive penalties anyway. Even if MA considers it "visionary" in terms of making sure people are insured it still puts disadvantaged people further into the poor house.
But....don't forget this is a capitalist country, and as I've said before if there's money to be made off of something, the federal government (especially under THIS Administration) doesn't want to step in and provide services for "free" where a business could supply the service and make money off of it.
The same day I was reading healthcare articles, I read one where health insurance carriers will drop you if your bills get too high or you submit too many claims to be paid. So, they want your money, but they don't want to give you anything in return for your money. THAT is f'd up.
Okay, that is f'ed up, but it doesn't surprise me that for-profit insurance companies will drop someone if that person cuts too far into their profit.
As for taxing not having insurance, it's basically criminalizing the victims. If someone can't afford health insurance they're supposed to be able to pay more in taxes? Or is MA thinking that it's a choice for these people to not have insurance? It's not different than a law that was proposed in Seattle years ago (and elsewhere I'm sure) that would criminalize homelessness. It doesn't fixt the problem, it merely turns the victims into law-breakers.
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